> The big problem I've had with Haskell is that even after gaining a pretty good understanding of the language (including monads and such) I still can't fathom how to do anything real with it

I agree with you but the book has chapters where you write a URL shortener and the final project is an implementation of the `finger` Unix command. For me, the book was a stepping stone towards materials like Write You a Scheme (Scheme interpreter in Haskell).

I will admit though, I read Haskell Book for the ideas and learning typed functional programming. I wasn't planning on using Haskell everyday for projects.